Something that will fit cleanly on bumper stickers and T-shirts and the like.

How about this: Rerun City.

Watching the latest swimming pool-related train wreck unfold this week, thatís all I could think of. Then it slipped into borderline offensive.

Opponents of the as-yet-still-hypothetical idea of building an indoor pool at Spellerberg Park to replace the leaking 45-year-old outdoor model that currently sits there said this week theyíve gathered about 7,000 signatures to put the issue on the ballot.

Oh, goody.

Perhaps it can go on the same ballot as whether we should have snowgates.

Thereís no question that the folks who donít want to see an indoor pool at Spellerberg or who want their driveways cleaned out after each snowfall arenít perfectly within their rights to press their petitions upon the populace.

In fact, their municipal engagement is laudable.

Enthusiasm is a poor replacement for policy, however.

And this one makes no sense.

The stated purpose in this opposition is that building an indoor pool on Western Avenue between 22nd and 26th streets somehow will affect the availability of parking at the Veteranís Administration hospital that sits on the same chunk of land.

At first glance, one might think that a legitimate point. Except that the hospital ó run by the federal government ó has its own entrance, doesnít share any parking with the existing pool and various recreational facilities and is served by a pretty wide stretch of concrete in 22nd Street.

The mammoth stone building and its accompanying campus basically is on its own block. There just isnít a street dividing the land masses. Access to the VA, in large measure, is less an issue than many, many other places in the city, including the major medical centers.

Yet thatís the argument ó traffic and parking.

It all came out during a news conference organized by the Save Spellerberg group this week.

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What started as a fairly pedestrian argument about parking spaces, however, took an ugly and unnecessary turn with little bit of emotional blackmail by Save Spellerberg organizer Paula Johnson.

ďLeaders of Sioux Falls expecting the veterans hospital to open their parking lots to city parks and recreation should have to look into the faces of each veteran, some 24,000 of them, and explain why a swimming pool facility is more important than a veteranís right to a parking space to access their doctors, when the land is on VA property,Ē Johnson said.

What an odd and confused juxtaposition.

The notion that somehow building an indoor pool will limit the health care of veterans is absurd.

How does an indoor pool have any more effect on that access than an outdoor pool, or a sledding hill, or tennis courts or a picnic area, for that matter? These all are current uses of the park and presumably arenít going to change any time soon.

Not to mention the aforementioned fact that thereís PLENTY OF ROOM.

Weíve heard this sort of nonsensical song before during the Drake Springs debate. In that case, it was that somehow we were preserving some monochromatic memory for children of frolicking about in an outdoor pool.

That was using the image of happy kids against the image of sad little children trapped in a post-apocalyptic world where children are trapped indoors.

This time, the kiddos are frolicking in a wave pool while their parentsí minivan is blocking the driveway while a WWII vet expires in the street.

Itís quite likely that weíll get to vote on another pool proposal. Of that, there is little doubt.

Letís have a decent discussion about whether an aquatic center should be built at Spellerberg. Listen to the traffic engineers and the planners.